and a number of others that no doubt matter to someone. I’ll let you look through that list and judge the varying levels of success these titles have reached yourself.

Existing popularity means never having to introduce yourself to an audience.

Having a licensed IP MMO has its upsides and downsides. Two big upsides are that 1) there is an existing fan base that can quickly mobilise to create buzz around the game and 2) a lot of thinking around the lore and art style has already been done for the developer. This saves time and money at the front end, plus having a game that attracts a lot of online newsprint can help justify increasing the development budget because it is obviously going to be a hit title.

The flip side is that the built-in fan base can be hypercritical of every design decision that somehow draws the game away from a “true” representation of that lore. Plus having a licensed IP gives developers less control over their game:

Star Trek Online requires that everything is approved by Paramount before development starts on it. Also, Star Trek started out at Perpetual Entertainment before ending up at Cryptic Studios – the IP licence was on-sold as part of Perpetual’s disintergration.

Ben 10 MMO – I can’t even sign up to the beta for this one; I keep getting an error message. TurnOut Ventures as well.

GURPS – going a long way back for this, but GURPS had planned to launch a Old West and Transhuman Space setting as a MMO then build on additional universes over time, but this project seems to have died off completely.

World of Darkness Online will provide another front for the Twilight Fan Wars, at least.

Plus then there are all those IP-licensed projects that start, but never quite make it to the announcement stage (e.g. Deadlands).

Which is a Long Way of Saying…

I understand the excitement around the announcement of a new IP-linked MMO, but such things need to be taken with a grain of salt. If it evens sees the light of day, an IP-linked MMO is bound to disappoint a lot of people because even in the best case a game developer can’t compete with the IP world a player has in their head.